On the Unsubtle Nature of Fish Ties
by nb41
Summary: Fancy clothes shopping for your alien boyfriend should be easier than this. (Jane, Darcy, Pepper. Age of Ultron-relevant; if you don't want spoilers for even the trailer, don't read!)


Inspired by boxfullofcats' tumblr post regarding Thor's red velvet jacket in the AoU trailer. There are no Age of Ultron specific spoilers in here save for those involving Thor's human attire as seen in the trailer.

This got a little plotty and vaguely menacing, because I can't help but want to echo the vibe of the trailer itself. Apologies; I really did intend for it to be fluffy! The Jane/Thor is implied/background.

* * *

><p>"No."<p>

"Why not?"

"Because it's a fish tie, and I'm not getting him a fish tie."

"Not even a fancy fish tie?"

"Not even a fancy one."

"But it's _subtle_." Darcy held the garish, white and blue tie's box out to Jane. "You can only see the fish pattern if you squint. It looks totally innocuous from a distance."

Jane ignored the proffered box and scanned the department store's various placards and signs. The sections were so poorly labeled it was a wonder anyone ever succeeded in finding what they needed. She might have to give up and check the directory. "It's still a fish tie, and I'm still not buying it."

Darcy pulled the box back. "Well maybe _I'll_ buy it."

"That is certainly your prerogative." Finally Jane spotted what she was searching for. "There. Jackets," she said, and headed for the series of long racks along the far wall.

Darcy said, "I bet _he'd_ like it."

"Then you can get it for him," Jane said over her shoulder. "Try to find some pants." Darcy sighed and made a vaguely affirmative reply.

For the most part Thor took care of his own clothes shopping, so there was no real need for Jane and Darcy to do it, but Jane liked to surprise him with a new piece she or Darcy had picked out every once in a while. It wasn't often you got to buy something for someone from another galaxy, after all. And since Tony had been dragging him to parties to show him off, Jane thought something a step or three up from jeans and t-shirts was in order.

Thus it was supremely frustrating to Jane that her attempt at a thoughtful gesture was turning into a time-consuming undertaking fraught with difficulty and disappointment. The intersection of evening wear which fit Thor, was nice looking, and also affordable was a rare beast. Additionally, Darcy had been harping on finding him something 'unique', because (she said) a business suit or dress shirt and slacks was too plain for him. If the point of evening wear was to show off, then as an alien prince Thor should _really_ show off. Of course Jane couldn't disagree with that, but 'unique' wasn't easy to find in his size and on their budget. Certainly nothing in the stores they'd visited thus far had fit the bill.

She began flipping through the jackets labeled 'tall' and became discouraged almost immediately. Black to dark blue and shades of gray in between were the order of the day, some pinstriped and some solid and all so very monotone. A couple of styles came in cream and ivory, though despite their eye-catching color they failed to impress her.

She was just about out of options in Thor's size when she spied a separate collection of coats and jackets at the very end of the rack. These weren't the usual single- or double-breasted suit pieces; they were overly long or had flared sleeves or sported elaborate embroidery. They came in a wider variety of colors and materials too, including blinding white, cerulean, and greens and purples so dark they were more like a lustrous black.

Jane gravitated to the motley collection and walked her fingers through its contents. She stopped at an eggshell blue tailcoat and laughed to herself at the mental image it produced. Next to it was a tomato red and black striped waistcoat. And next to that...

It was one of the longer jackets, made of carmine velvet and lined with black satin. Save for the peaked lapels the cut was plain, making it a jacket which could be paired with a tie and pocket square for more formal occasions, or worn open with a plain shirt to keep things simple without becoming too casual.

She ran the material between her fingers and couldn't help but think of his cape. The color wasn't quite the same, though the effect certainly would be. The extra length would look good on him, and emphasize how tall he was (which Tony and Clint would complain about)

Darcy's voice interrupted her thoughts. "_Not_ bad." She was carrying a selection of pants in various dark colors. "Sort of like his cape."

"Yeah," Jane said absently. She told herself she wasn't petting it.

Darcy tugged the price tag out of a sleeve and her face screwed up. "Ouch."

"'Ouch'?" Jane peered, trying to read it. "How ouch are we talking here?"

Darcy folded the tag back into place. "You don't want to know. It'll just depress you."

Jane sighed and looked at the price display, and her heart sank. "This is hopeless. Anything that would look really _good_ on him is too expensive."

"There's an idea." Darcy was inspecting the jacket's collar. When she caught Jane's puzzled look, she explained, "We could expense it."

"What?"

"You know, to your Stark Industries research fund."

"I'm pretty sure evening wear for Thor doesn't count as equipment, training, or related travel."

"Come on, he's living evidence of alien life on the other side of the universe. How is that _not_ relevant to all the space work you do for them."

Jane shook her head. "We can find him something more affordable." But she didn't rehang the jacket; she just kept feeling the material and trying to think of ways to justify how much it no doubt cost.

Darcy's voice brought her back to reality. "I think...we're being watched."

Jane glanced up and Darcy flicked her eyes towards the jewelry counter. Sure enough, there was a man in a dark suit observing them in between exchanges with the sales representative. He was about he same height as Bruce and maybe of a similar age, but where Bruce was a rumpled sort of comfortable person this man's posture brought Jane's ex Donald to mind: lean, angular, and exuding confidence in an overbearing way. His slate blue-gray suit was as immaculately styled as his black salt-and-pepper hair, and helped offset his otherwise pale and blotchy complexion.

"Doesn't look like the usual SHIELD agent," Jane said. Darcy scoffed.

"You can say that again. That suit costs more than I make in a month." Jane raised her eyebrows, and Darcy held up her free hand. "Not saying I'm underpaid. Just saying there are new cars worth less than his outfit."

Jane looked at the man again—he was still at the counter—and began going through the pants Darcy was holding. "I'm sure he's just here shopping. Really, what would a guy in clothes like that be staring at us for."

"Well have you been on TV lately? Been in any newspaper articles?"

In between examining pairs of pants Jane said, "Not that I know of."

"What about the article in Scientific American? You were on the cover for that one."

"That was last year." Definitely not the brown. The black was okay. Maybe the blue—

"He's coming over here."

The man was, in fact, walking towards them. "He probably wants to look at the jackets," Jane said, and pointed at the pile of pants. "No to brown. Yes to gray and black."

Darcy left off watching the man approach and nodded down at the jacket. "What about that?"

"If the price is officially 'ouch' then I think we have to find something else. Or maybe just no jacket, he'll be fine in a good shirt." Still, she couldn't quite bring herself to put it back.

Darcy's eyes widened. "Uh, Jane..."

Jane looked up to find the man standing next to them. "Afternoon," he said. His voice belied his features entirely; it was the rich, measured kind of tone you associated with famous radio personalities or stage performers. "I hope I'm not intruding."

"Hi," Jane said, unable to prevent a note of 'you totally are' from slipping in. Darcy juggled the pants so she could wave at him.

The man gave them a faint smile. "My apologies, Dr. Foster, it's just I've been interested in your work for a while now, and I happened to notice you while I was shopping."

Jane knew she should feel surprised (or maybe impressed) someone knew her by name and even recognized her in public, yet neither of those reactions surfaced. In the awkward pause that ensued, Darcy snapped her fingers and pointed at the man.

"Morris Plutarch," she said. "CEO of Delphi Aeronautical Systems Incorporated."

He tilted his head and looked at Darcy like he'd only just noticed she was an actual person. "That's right. You have me at a disadvantage, Ms...?"

"Lewis. Darcy. Lab Manager."

Plutarch replied with a soft, "Ah," that packed so much meaning into the sound it seemed like a sentence. "So if I wanted to request a business meeting with Dr. Foster, I'd need to contact you first?"

Darcy smiled. "That's right," she said. Her friendly tone sounded forced.

"A business meeting about what?" Jane asked.

Plutarch considered Jane again. "I'm interested in your work with Einstein-Rosen bridges. Your theory raises some very interesting questions, especially with regard to the possibility of realizing interstellar travel."

This, at least, was familiar ground. "There's a lot of problems we have to solve before we can get to that point. Just generating the wormhole isn't enough—you have to stabilize it so it stays open and closes in a controlled manner. Then you have to make it safe for objects and people to traverse. And then you need a way to direct where it's going."

"That all sounds like an enormous undertaking. What part are you working on right now?"

"Designing and constructing the right kind of power source."

Plutarch raised his eyebrows. "The right kind?"

"To open one long enough to get anywhere outside the solar system would take as much power as," Jane waved her free arm, "the entire United States uses in a day. That's obviously not feasible. We have to find some kind of renewable resource for this to really work."

"And that's why you're with Stark? Because of his work in renewable energy?"

Jane hesitated. She'd suspected this might turn towards talk of Stark sooner or later. "Actually I'm with Stark Industries to help with some of their contracts. I do the Einstein-Rosen bridge research separately through my university appointment."

"I see." Plutarch seemed to be examining her somehow, and Jane wondered how to extricate herself from the conversation without making an enormous scene. "You sound pretty certain about the power requirements. Does that mean you've already built a partially functional prototype?"

Darcy nudged her foot, which Jane took as a warning to watch what she said. She did, in fact, have a prototype underway; by her own conservative estimates it would be done in another month. But until it was up and running, the public—including Fortune 500 defense industry CEOs—didn't get to hear about how she'd ridden the Bifrost and seen Asgard's Observatory and focusing chamber with her own eyes and visited not one but two worlds outside of their solar system. They got to hear about the hundreds of simulations and calculations she'd run on the Greenwich data.

"No, not yet. I'm working with the data I gathered in Greenwich. The forces needed to cause those gravitational anomalies were enormous, and they were as close to wormholes as I've seen on Earth."

Plutarch smiled. Jane got the distinct impression he knew she was lying. "Right, the Greenwich Apocalypse," he said, and folded his arms. "You said in your paper—the one in the American Journal of Physics, from earlier this year—that you were able to take direct readings."

"That's right."

"So you knew it was coming?"

"I'd been working on data my colleague Dr. Selvig and I were pulling from various observatories."

"Data everyone else was ignoring."

Jane shrugged. "Interstellar travel via wormhole is kind of fringe. I'm not surprised Erik and I were the only ones who noticed and followed up on it."

Was he leaning closer to her? He might be. "Fringe, but apparently very real. After all, wasn't an individual from beyond our solar system there with you in Greenwich?"

Jane's stomach lurched. Not a lot of people knew that kind of thing about Thor.

A little more loudly than necessary, Darcy said, "Look, you don't need to talk about Erik like that. I mean, just because he's been having some trouble lately. That's rude."

Plutarch shot Darcy a narrow-eyed look and straightened. He spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Of course not, I'd never imply something like that about Professor Selvig. Mental illness is a very serious issue. I hope he's doing well."

"He is," Jane said.

"That's good to hear."

Jane shifted uncomfortably. Plutarch seemed to be waiting for her to say something else. There was no way he was dragging a single word out of her about Thor, so she said, "Well if you want a meeting just send Darcy an email and we'll see if we can work something out. I'm pretty busy, so I can't promise it would be any time soon."

"Yeah, it might be a while," Darcy said. She wasn't even trying to mask her contempt now. "Like, a long while."

Disappointment flickered in Plutarch's eyes, there and gone in a second. "That's not a problem."

Jane decided she'd had enough of his existence. "We've still got a lot to do today, so we should get going," she said, and made to put the jacket back. Plutarch placed a hand on it, forcing her to stop.

"You're not going to buy it?" he asked.

Jane suddenly felt, for no particular reason, like she didn't know the right answer to this question, and so said nothing. Neither did Darcy. Plutarch gave the jacket a once-over and fingered the collar.

"That's a shame," he said. "It's a good jacket. Definitely...unique. For a person who really stands out." His eyes went to the pants Darcy was holding, then to the jacket, and finally to Jane once more. "I'm sure it would look impressive on whoever you're shopping for."

Jane felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Before she could ask Darcy if she happened to have her tazer, Plutarch's focus shifted to a point past them, and his expression went from calmly menacing to annoyed in the blink of an eye. He let go of the jacket, and Jane pulled it against herself and wrapped her other arm around it.

From just behind them, Jane heard Pepper say, "_Here_ you two are."

Darcy startled. "Ms. Potts! Hi!" She sounded unabashedly relieved. "Yeah, here we—are."

Jane half-turned so she could see Pepper, and Darcy shuffled aside, making room for her to stand between them. When Pepper spoke, her voice was warm as reassuring as her expression. "Sorry I kept you waiting, it took me longer to finish up than I thought it would."

Jane tried to recover her composure. "It's fine, we were just, having a look at everything. While we waited." Which was a bald-faced lie, because Jane hadn't known Pepper was in the store much less had any plans to meet her.

"Pepper," Plutarch said, and dipped his head. "So good to see you."

Pepper smiled her brightest 'I really dislike you but we're in public' smile. "Morris. It's good to see you too," she said, and Jane was in awe of the sincerity of Pepper's delivery. "Shopping for a new suit?"

With a glint in his eye, Plutarch said, "A new watch, actually."

Pepper's mouth twitched. "That's right. Last week, at the MIT get together."

"Yes. The MIT get together."

"Well I'm sure it was just an accident."

Plutarch's demeanor was becoming less sanguine by the second. Whatever he and Pepper were talking about, it sounded like an interesting story, particularly if it related to Tony and Colonel Rhodes getting up to no good at Plutarch's expense.

"I'm sure," Plutarch said. He looked pointedly at Jane. "I'll email your Lab Manager about that meeting, Dr. Foster."

"You do that," Darcy said, jutting out her chin.

Jane fidgeted with the jacket. "I'll keep an eye out for it."

Plutarch flashed his teeth at Jane and Darcy. "If you'll excuse me, ladies," he said, and retreated to the far exit.

Jane let out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding. "Thanks," she said.

"Don't mention it." Pepper's eyes didn't leave Plutarch until he was out of the store. "I was worried he'd come sniffing around you sooner or later. He's always trying to pry at everyone we're working with."

Darcy frowned. "Seriously? He personally _stalks_ your business associates?"

"I wouldn't call it stalking, per se, but he's definitely not just interested in drones and missiles these days." Pepper took out her phone and tapped at it. "Maria's been looking into him for me. She hasn't found anything yet, but the fact that he was checking up on the SpaceX contracts has me worried."

"Actually, he was asking about wormholes." Jane ran a hand over the jacket. "And Thor."

Pepper blinked. "Thor?"

Darcy said, "Yeah, he didn't even ask about the space probes."

"That's definitely not good. Especially if he was trying to set up a meeting with you." Pepper swept at her phone's screen and stowed it in her purse.

"A meeting which I have _zero_ intention of ever attending," Jane said.

"So that means I'm round-filing all of his email?" Darcy said.

"More like you can feel free to add him to the spam filter."

Darcy nodded. "Even better."

"That sounds like a good idea. And let Maria know if he approaches you again." Pepper eyed Darcy's pile of pants. "What brings you two here, anyways?"

"Shopping for Thor," Darcy said. She gestured at the jacket with her free hand. "What do you think?"

Jane offered the jacket to Pepper, and Pepper raised her eyebrows as she inspected it. "This is _very_ nice. It's a good color for him." She rubbed the material between her fingers. "Like the cape, right?"

"Exactly," Darcy said, then with a sideways glance at Jane, added, "Think we can expense it?"

"_Darcy_."

Darcy ignored her and continued. "It's for all those dinner parties Stark is always throwing. He wants Thor to show up because having alien demigods at your dinner parties is pretty hard to top, but he needs better clothes for that. _Earth_ clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt doesn't really cut it, no matter how good he looks in them."

Fortunately Pepper didn't appear upset by the suggestion; in fact, she seemed to be giving it serious thought. "Sounds reasonable. He's not really an employee under contract, but he _does_ do a lot for us on the side as a member of the Avengers. We could put it under that budget."

Jane couldn't believe this was happening. "No, Pepper, we don't need to expense it, really—"

Pepper shook her head, and Jane stopped. "Darcy's right. Thor wouldn't be needing these kind of outfits if Tony didn't insist on having him show up to impress politicians and business peers at company functions. Think of it like a work uniform."

That, at least, seemed reasonable. Jane relaxed. "Only if it's not a problem."

"It's definitely not."

"See?" Darcy said. "Cape jacket is a go."

"Okay," Jane said, and when Pepper handed it back to her she ran a hand over it again.

Pepper gazed around the store. "He'll need a shirt too, right? And shoes? What about a tie?"

Darcy held up the box from earlier. "My vote is this one."

Pepper examined the box and gave Darcy a tired look. "No."

Jane said, "That's what I told her."

"But it's _subtle_!"

"The only subtle fish tie is one that never leaves the store," Pepper said, and set the box on a nearby table of gloves. "So. Shirts?"


End file.
